PUMPKIN-ENVY

How many hours did I lie in bed, thought stapling
my sixteen-year-old arms to the sheets,
thought's curare, when I finally did dial Tami Jamison,
numbing my lips too much to speak?

How often did I think, "I'm dead," feeling
my strength leak away, phlegm drown my lungs,
sarcomas thrust like red toads up out of my skin
in the three days between the blood-drawing

and the doctor's benediction: "Negative."
Thought is a rope that pulls the kite out of the sky--
a cramp that locks the boxer's chin as fists hiss
toward his head. "What sharks?" my friend demands,

launching the sea-kayak that gives him so much fun.
How many odes would Keats have traded for one
night with Fanny Browne? What did understanding do
for Nietzsche, but make him more insane?

Thought is more deadly than crack or heroin.
Its pipe to my lips, its needle in my vein,
I loll in my dark room, and envy pumpkin vines.
Whatever's in their way, they overrun. Unafraid

of blight, birds, drought, or humans' being,
they stretch out in the heat, let their roots drink deep
and--never giving a thought to anything--
make a million copies of the sun.

~Charles Harper Webb


(from Webb, Charles Harper. "Pumpkin-Envy." Amplified Dog. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2006)